macrumors 604

Here's a little part of the Aspyr newsletter I recieved in my e-mail today. It has to do with some games being released as a Universal Binary so they can run on a PowerPC or Intel Macintoshes.

"Having completed a thorough test of all our
older games on Intel Macs, we'll now move to some of the other titles.
Some of the games most likely to have Universal updates are Rollercoaster
Tycoon 3, SimCity(TM) 4, Call of Duty(TM), and Command & Conquer(TM)
Generals. Exact details will be announced soon.

One of the other interesting projects we've recently undertaken has been
moving the SMP (multi-processor) support for Quake 4(TM) from the beta
patch released for Windows to the OS X version. Our initial work has shown
amazing results, and we hope to have the dual processor aware version ofQuake 4(TM) Mac ready to release in late March. Historically it has been
difficult for many games to get a speed boost from dual processors, but
having access to a very well engineered codebase that is SMP aware on the
PC has really helped in this case. Keep an eye on your favorite Mac games
sites for the Quake 4(TM) SMP patch!

Patches
Universal patches for Shrek 2(TM) and Spiderman 2(TM) were released in
early March. These allow the games to have much better performance on
Intel Macs. The Sims(TM) 2 Universal patch and Civ� 3 Complete Universal
patches should also be available about the time you read this. These
patches and other updates can be found at http://www.aspyr.com/support"

It seems like they are trying to port more games to the Intel Macs. Nothing is set in stone yet but, it looks like they're trying to get as many games as possible out as a Universal Binary. Looks like it's time to update the Mac Guides section of Universal Binary Games.

Update: I've updated the Mac Guides UB Game list but, if I made any mistakes feel free to edit them

macrumors 603

hi, i see this "universal binary" thing said a lot round here, but i don't know what it means :/

can anyone help me out? i feel (yet again) stupid! : ]

peace

Click to expand...

It means that the application is compiled so that it runs at full speed on both a Mac with an Intel processor and on a Mac with a PowerPC processor.

If an application isn't a universal binary, it is compiled for the PowerPC processor and will only run full speed on a PowerPC based Mac. Mac OS X includes a technology called Rosetta that lets Intel based Macs run most non-universal apps by translating the PowerPC machine language to Intel machine language as needed. This will slow down the application.

macrumors 6502a

. The Sims(TM) 2 Universal patch and Civ� 3 Complete Universal
patches should also be available about the time you read this. These
patches and other updates can be found at http://www.aspyr.com/support[/i]"

Click to expand...

This topic was started a long time ago, and it states The Sims 2 Universal patch should be available, but I can't seem to find this anywhere??

macrumors member

I assume that if they release a UB for Call of Duty, that they'd do the same for it's divine expansion pack, United Offensive. Just got my 1.83 Duo Core today and I can't wait. UO plays fine but have to turn down the settings.

macrumors regular

macrumors newbie

"We do plan to provide a UB patch for this title, but since we have very many patches in the works, and this is only one of them, I really can't give you any release dates. The best way to keep informed about patch updates is to sign up for our newsletter [...]"

This is a response by Aspyr to an enquiry as to when we might see a UB patch for C&C as well as Zero.

macrumors 68000

macrumors member

Maybe they will finally fix the problem of Sim City 4 not working right on 10.4.

Click to expand...

I've also been waiting for some kind of Sim City 4 patch. There were several earlier threads talking about people asking Asyr to fix the PowerPC problems, but getting responses like "Not going to happen". I've given up on the game, as well as Asyr, but this new universal patch movement has me thinking.

What are the chances that a universal patch for SC4 would also fix issues with PowerPC? If the problems were 10.4 specific, perhaps they'll have to be addressed cross platform? Does anyone have a more informed opinion about this? Is there a possibility a universal patch would fix the horrible problems for the rest of us lowly PowerPC users?

MacRumors attracts a broad audience
of both consumers and professionals interested in
the latest technologies and products. We also boast an active community focused on
purchasing decisions and technical aspects of the iPhone, iPod, iPad, and Mac platforms.